The same economic pressure to supply this food cheaply applies to the labour costs as well as to the cost of the raw material. There are serious questions about the complex nature of the supply chains and the conditions and experiences of those low-paid workers who produce, process and pack our food.

The inquiry found there was widespread mistreatment of agency workers, especially pregnant and migrant workers. While progress has been made by the industry in a number of areas, EHRC points to several areas where problems persist: discrimination against agency workers, and workers not being able to feed in confidentially to ethical audits carried out by supermarkets.

These extremes of labour exploitation are thankfully only found in a small segment of the huge UK food industry. Indeed, the supermarkets have put in place a system of ethical auditing to inspect the workplaces of their suppliers and support the Gangmasters Licensing Authority, which plays a vital role in tackling unscrupulous labour providers.

Reader comments

The fact is our food industry can afford to provide us with affordable low cost and high quality food whilst paying the people who supply it a living wage and improving working conditions.
But they are greedy and keep the profits they make for bosses and shareholders.

I’ve read Marx – and since his entire theory of history is premissed on different historical epocs being based on different relations of production I can’t see how invoking the name of the Left’s favourite Beardy helps your argument.